The ingestion of alcoholic beverages, even when consumed in moderation, may lead to a variety of post-consumption symptoms, including headache, tremulousness, nausea, sour stomach, diarrhea, dizziness, fatigue and decreased cognitive or visual-spatial skills, collectively and popularly known as “hangover.”
Such symptoms are believed to be connected to dehydration, hormonal alterations, deregulation of cytokine pathways and a variety of other toxic effects of alcohol. Of these, dehydration is believed to be one of the primary causes of hangover symptoms. As an alcoholic beverage is ingested, ethanol is absorbed into the blood stream. In the body, ethanol and its metabolites are identified as toxins and broken down to less harmful chemical entities. The liver and kidneys are the organs where most of the toxin processing takes place. In order for toxins to be processed adequately by the liver and kidneys, they must be dissolved in water. When the amount of toxins generated by alcohol consumption is higher than the amount of water available in the stomach, water is drawn from other areas of the body, such as the blood, the lymph nodes and the brain, causing dehydration, which in turn may result in effects ranging from mere headaches to serious harm to the brain, kidneys, liver, lymph nodes and other vital organs of the body, up to and including death.
Another toxic effect of alcohol consumption is associated with the buildup of acetaldehyde during the metabolism of ethanol by the liver and kidneys. Ethanol breakdown in the liver involves two steps which are catalyzed by two different enzymes. In the first step, the enzyme alcohol dehydrogenase converts ethanol in to acetaldehyde, which is toxic. In the second step, the enzyme dehydrogenease converts the acetaldehyde into harmless acetate. When acetaldehyde is produced at a faster rate than it is converted to acetate, excess acetaldehyde accumulates in the liver, causing severe toxic effects, up to and including breakdown of liver tissue.
Many attempts have been made to devise remedies to alleviate the many symptoms of hangover, but very few are effective against the large variety of symptoms noted above. In addition, many over-the-counter remedies have their own deleterious side effects. There is therefore a need for a composition for broad spectrum relief from the many symptoms of hangover that is safe and effective.